Decision Making through Integration of Sensory Evidence at Prolonged Timescales

Waskom, Michael; Kiani, Roozbeh

doi:10.1016/j.cub.2018.10.021

Cited by 45 publications

(45 citation statements)

References 57 publications

(76 reference statements)

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“…But neither our experiment nor our analysis presumes a drift diffusion model, or that evidence is being accumulated, in either species. The data presented here are consistent with evidence accumulation, but we have not done other tests, such as motion kernel analysis (8) or choice prediction from reaction time (31), to distinguish integration from other strategies, such as extrema detection (32).…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 79%

The interaction between elapsed time and decision accuracy differs between humans and rats

Shevinsky

Reinagel

2019

Preprint

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A stochastic visual motion discrimination task is widely used to study rapid decisionmaking in humans and animals. Among trials of the same sensory difficulty within a block of fixed decision strategy, humans and monkeys are widely reported to make more errors in the individual trials with longer reaction times. This finding has posed a challenge for the drift-diffusion model of sensory decision-making, which in its basic form predicts that errors and correct responses should have the same reaction time distributions. We previously reported that rats also violate this model prediction, but in the opposite direction: for rats, motion discrimination accuracy was highest in the trials with the longest reaction times. To rule out task differences as the cause of our divergent finding in rats, the present study tested humans and rats using the same task and analyzed their data identically. We confirmed that rats' accuracy increased with reaction time, whereas humans' accuracy decreased with reaction time in the same task. These results were further verified using a new temporally-local analysis method, ruling out that the observed trend was an artifact of non-stationarity in the data of either species. The main effect was found whether the signal strength (motion coherence) was varied in randomly interleaved trials or held constant within a block. The magnitude of the effects increased with motion coherence. These results provide new constraints useful for refining and discriminating among the many alternative mathematical theories of decision-making.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 79%

The interaction between elapsed time and decision accuracy differs between humans and rats

Shevinsky

Reinagel

2019

Preprint

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“…experiment 4). Such stimulus-locked temporal sensitivity is frequently observed in perceptual decision making paradigms and in part may reflect the participant-specific strategies for analyzing the sensory environment, temporal leakage in decision processes, or the urgency to respond [44,45]. Importantly, our results show that this sensitivity profile is augmented by a more rapidly changing temporal structure that emerges at precisely those time scales deemed relevant for auditory perceptual sensitivity by neuroimaging studies.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 50%

Evidence for the rhythmic perceptual sampling of auditory scenes

Kayser

2019

Preprint

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Converging results suggest that perception is controlled by rhythmic processes in the brain. In the auditory domain, neuroimaging studies show that the perception of brief sounds is shaped by rhythmic activity prior to the stimulus and electrophysiological recordings have linked delta band (1-2 Hz) activity to the functioning of individual neurons. These results have promoted theories of rhythmic modes of listening and generally suggest that the perceptually relevant encoding of acoustic information is structured by rhythmic processes along auditory pathways. A prediction from this perspective ̶ which so far has not been tested ̶ is that such rhythmic processes also shape how acoustic information is combined over time to judge extended soundscapes. The present study was designed to directly test this prediction. Human participants judged the overall change in perceived frequency content in temporally extended (1.2 to 1.8 s) soundscapes, while the perceptual use of the available sensory evidence was quantified using psychophysical reverse correlation. Model-based analysis of individual participant's perceptual weights revealed a rich temporal structure, including linear trends, a Ushaped profile tied to the overall stimulus duration, and importantly, rhythmic components at the time scale of 1 to 2Hz. The collective evidence found here across four versions of the experiment supports the notion that rhythmic processes operating on the delta band time scale structure how perception samples temporally extended acoustic scenes.

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“…Recent work has suggested that when traditional evidence accumulation tasks are performed, it is hard to dissociate whether subjects are combining information across samples, or whether conventional analyses may be disguising a simpler heuristic 32,33 . In particular, an alternative decisionmaking strategy which does not involve temporal accumulation of evidence is to detect the single most extreme sample.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

A circuit mechanism for irrationalities in decision-making and NMDA receptor hypofunction: behaviour, computational modelling, and pharmacology

Cavanagh

Lam

Murray

et al. 2019

Preprint

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24Decision-making biases can be systematic features of normal behaviour, or deficits underlying 25 neuropsychiatric symptoms. We used behavioural psychophysics, spiking-circuit modelling and 26 pharmacological manipulations to explore decision-making biases in health and disease. Monkeys 27 performed an evidence integration task in which they showed a pro-variance bias (PVB): a preference 28to choose options with more variable evidence. The PVB was also present in a spiking circuit model, 29revealing a neural mechanism for this behaviour. Because NMDA receptor (NMDA-R) hypofunction is 30 a leading hypothesis for neuropathology in schizophrenia, we simulated behavioural effects of NMDA-31 R hypofunction onto either excitatory or inhibitory neurons in the model. These were tested 32 experimentally using the NMDA-R antagonist ketamine, yielding changes in decision-making 33 consistent with lowered cortical excitation/inhibition balance from NMDA-R hypofunction onto 34 excitatory neurons. These results provide a circuit-level mechanism that bridges across explanatory 35 scales, from the synaptic to the behavioural, in neuropsychiatric disorders where decision-making 36 biases are prominent. 37Significance 38 39People can make apparently irrational decisions because of underlying features in their decision 40 circuitry. Deficits in the same neural circuits may also underlie debilitating cognitive symptoms of 41 neuropsychiatric patients. Here, we reveal a neural circuit mechanism explaining an irrationality 42 frequently observed in healthy humans making binary choices -the pro-variance bias. Our circuit 43 model could be perturbed by introducing deficits in either excitatory or inhibitory neuron function. 44These two perturbations made specific, dissociable predictions for the types of irrational decision-45 making behaviour produced. We used the NMDA-R antagonist ketamine, an experimental model for 46 schizophrenia, to test if these predictions were relevant to neuropsychiatric pathophysiology. The 47 results were consistent with impaired excitatory neuron function, providing important new insights into 48 the pathophysiology of schizophrenia. 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60

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Decision Making through Integration of Sensory Evidence at Prolonged Timescales

Cited by 45 publications

References 57 publications

The interaction between elapsed time and decision accuracy differs between humans and rats

The interaction between elapsed time and decision accuracy differs between humans and rats

Evidence for the rhythmic perceptual sampling of auditory scenes

A circuit mechanism for irrationalities in decision-making and NMDA receptor hypofunction: behaviour, computational modelling, and pharmacology

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